Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
Something Quirky in the Science High School Test
By
Garth Johnston
Published Nov 12, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
By
Garth Johnston
Published Nov 12, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Nothing, except maybe college admissions, seems to get New York parents panties into a twist like the city's specialized high schools. Parent have, since the inception of "the Test," been complaining about how unfair it is that admission into the city's math and science schools is decided completely by a test that is taken only once in eighth grade. They complain that at the Boston Latin School admissions takes grades into account and that at the Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, a sibling school to Stuy, they not only use test scores but also grades, essays and teacher recommendations.
And so today the Times throws fuel into the fire by pointing out a fun quirk in the weighting of scores in the test. Seems a student who gets a perfect or a near perfect on either the verbal or math side of the test barely needs to touch the other part of the test to get into the top schools. In other words:
Last year, for instance, a student with a 99 percentile score in math and 49 percentile in verbal would have been admitted to Stuyvesant High School - the most coveted specialized school - but a student with a 97 in math and 92 in verbal would not.
Ok. But does this quirk, which kind of explains the kids we knew at Stuy who could barely speak English and the kids who took Speaker Building instead of calculus, ever get used in a such an extreme sense? Not very often is our guess. "Last year one-fifth of 1 percent of the more then 25,000 eighth graders who took the test last year scored perfectly on one part." Of those only one student scored below the 60th percentile in the the other part of the test. There's a nice graphic explaining the quirk here.
Which is a long way of saying, if it were up to us we would be hard pressed to change the basics of "the Test." But that's us, what about you?
Tagged
boston
Boston Latin
college
fire
fun
high school
kids
new york
News: NYC
schools
science
stuyvesant high
stuyvesant high school
the city
thomas jefferson
virginia
Garth Johnston
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Retired NYPD detective charged with murder in George Washington Bridge shooting
Police say a Rockland County man was fatally shot during what appeared to be a road rage incident on Tuesday night.
By
Charles Lane
Published Oct 21, 2026
Modified Oct 21, 2026 at 5:43 p.m. ET
NYPD officer faces disciplinary trial 10 years after killing Delrawn Small
Officer Wayne Isaacs will go on trial in January on a charge that he used improper force when he shot and killed Delrawn Small in East New York in July 2016.
By
Ben Feuerherd
News
NYPD officer faces disciplinary trial 10 years after killing Delrawn Small
Officer Wayne Isaacs will go on trial in January on a charge that he used improper force when he shot and killed Delrawn Small in East New York in July 2016.
By
Ben Feuerherd
NYC adult daycare operators charged with committing over $500K in Medicaid fraud
By
Caroline Lewis
Port Authority eyes $117M fix to Manhattan roadway where falling debris smashed cars
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Bronx couple starved their 3-year-old to death, indictment says
By
Catalina Gonella
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .